Actor Mekhi Phifer knows which career he won't go back to: aspiring rapper. "I'm going on 36. Rap is definitely a youthful expression. Those days are over."

By Nancy Mills, Special for USA TODAY

Mekhi Phifer was already a good poker player before becoming a regular on Lie to Me, Fox's series about a psychologist who can read clues in a person's microexpressions and body language. Now he's even better at the game.

"I try to use some of the skills I picked up from the show," says Phifer, 35, who plays FBI agent Ben Reynolds. "When a certain card comes out, you watch people's expressions. Do they swallow hard? Do their eyes dart down?

"I try to look for differences in their persona. You can't tell everything at first. You have to sit there and watch how the person plays before you can start to make that effective. In any case, it makes the game more interesting."

On Lie to Me, which resumed Season 2 last month, actor Tim Roth leads a team played by Kelli Williams, Brendan Hines and Monica Raymund that studies facial tics. Phifer, on the other hand, is responsible for the action.

"I'm the guy with the gun and the badge," he says. "My character get to kick ass and take names. I love it!"

Phifer will be familiar to fans of ER, where he played Dr. Greg Pratt for six years. When his character was killed off in 2008, he began looking for another long-term assignment. "I want to work on things that are good and intriguing," he says. "There's not a hell of a lot out there bowling me over. That's what I love about being on a great show like Lie to Me."

Phifer's character first appeared at the end of Season 1 with a lot of experience — and a healthy dose of skepticism. "He came in with a certain notion of how to deal with things. He was definitely skeptical in the beginning, but as time went on, and as we solved a lot of crimes together, he started to respect it and rely on it."

Phifer promises "some bloodshed and some shooting" in the "cliffhanger" finale, and says that he enjoys the drama and power of it all. "I always try to bring a certain masculine presence to what I do," he says. "That is part of the dynamic."

His movie résumé reflects a penchant for serious subject matter (8 Mile, Brian's Song, Dawn of the Dead), and Phifer says not to expect him in a comedy any time soon. "It's not my thing. I've tried it very seldom. I tend to play more true-to-life characters in real situations."

That's always been Phifer's strength, starting from the moment he was discovered nearly two decades ago at an open audition for Spike Lee's Clockers. At the time, he was a budding rapper headed to SUNY at New Paltz to study electrical engineering. But, his cousin dragged him to the audition where he beat out 1,000 other hopefuls for the leading role of a conflicted drug dealer.

Unfortunately, it was territory that Phifer knew. He had dabbled in drug-dealing himself a few years earlier "for a minute, for a few dollars" before realizing he was jeopardizing his future.

"It was peer pressure that made me dally in selling a bit. I never used drugs, but I wanted those nice hundred-dollar sneakers."

Phifer credits his single schoolteacher motherwith instilling in him the determination to escape his surroundings.

"She was the key factor," he says. "Growing up in a rough environment like Harlem, you learn things inadvertently. You have to have a certain strength to live there and a certain strength to go beyond there and still have credibility to go back there. It definitely teaches you some things.

"I know a lot of people who are weak, who are in a perpetual cycle of poverty and being locked up. There are guys from my neighborhood who are in jail or who are dead. It does take a certain strength to know your environment and say, 'I can grow beyond it.'"

Phifer now lives in Los Angeles and is a single father. He has two sons: Omikaye, 9, with ex-wife actress Malinda Williams and Mekhi Thira Phifer, Jr., 2, with ex-partner Onanong Souratha.

"I'm a very active dad. There's no other way to be. I see my kids whenever I'm not working."

Between Lie to Me and his production company, Facilitator Films, Phifer is working plenty.

The company has made two movies, Phifer's directorial debut Puff, Puff, Pass and This Christmas, which starred singer Chris Brown and Avatar's Laz Alonso. "We have a couple of projects we're trying to get made, but it's a very uncertain business," Phifer says.

He is certain, however, that he won't be reviving his rap career.

"I'm going on 36. Rap is definitely a youthful expression. Those days are over. I don't know what I'd say. My passion shifted."

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